by Jeff Gunhus
Another long pause, as they talked among themselves. Finally, each of them threw their weapons on the floor in front of them.
“Okay, weapons are down. Now come forward with your hands up,” Lucas yelled.
“Go,” I said to the others. “As fast as you can, go.”
One by one, the guys ran from their hiding spots and jumped over the edge. First Will, then T-Rex, who surprised me by following right along without hesitating. As Xavier ran, I turned and sprinted after him.
I heard cries from Lucas and the other Black Death hunters and I knew they would be scrambling for their gun.
Xavier jumped over the edge, then Daniel.
Gunshots erupted behind me.
I yelled as I dug hard, running as fast as I could to the opening.
Bullets zinged right past me, so close that I could have sworn I felt them as they passed.
With a final burst of effort, I reached the edge, planted my right foot and jumped as far as I could into the open air.
15
My stomach lurched as I dropped in a free-fall. I had a panicked moment where I thought my wingsuit wasn’t working and that I was going to tumble through the air and end up smashed on the rocks beneath.
I spread my legs as wide as I could, stretching the rubber between them. I pulled my arms from my sides too, trying to get as much lift as possible. A second later, the air caught me and I felt my whole body suddenly buffeted by the wind as I pulled out of my dive like a bird swooping through the air.
I looked up just in time to see Daniel fly through the gap in the rocks and disappear to the other side. They’d all made it through.
But I was too far to the left, heading straight toward the rock wall.
I twisted my body to the right, forcing my right hand lower, fighting against the force of the wind.
I headed more to the right, but the change in direction was slower than I needed. I didn’t know if it was going to be enough. The rock wall was coming at me too fast.
I pushed my arm down lower, yelling from the effort.
As the rock wall rose in front of me, I closed my eyes, bracing for impact.
My left hand and foot scraped against the rock as I passed through the opening. But a second later I was through. I opened my eyes and yelled again, but this time from pure exhilaration.
I was thousands of feet up from the canyon floor, out in the middle of the vast space between the ragged mountain tops. The others were ahead and beneath me. I could see Daniel closest to me but only counted three other black dots beneath him.
Carefully, I dipped my left shoulder into the wind and arced to the left so that I could see where we’d just left.
I was surprised to see I was still just barely below the castle, a looming structure on the end on the promontory of rock. There must have been an updraft keeping me from falling too fast. I was like a hawk drifting on the wind without needing to flap my wings.
I was enjoying the sensation of floating when I spotted a dark figure flying at me from above. On reflex, I brought my arms in to protect myself. The move sent me into an immediate, uncontrolled tumble through the air.
Sky and ground switched places in a dizzying rotation and my stomach felt like it was in my throat.
Over the roar of the wind, I heard a booming voice. “Straighten out your arms. You can control the spin.”
I obeyed and, after a half-dozen more nauseating spins, finally brought myself back under control. Eva flew a few yards away from me. It made sense now. She had clung onto the rock outcropping to wait for us.
The wind buffeted us from below. I knew it was because we were falling through the air even as the wing suits allowed us to fly forward, but it felt no different from being in a windstorm while on the ground.
“Look!” Eva cried out, pointing behind us.
I craned my neck around and saw what she was looking at.
Two large dots were in the air right above us and bearing down on us fast.
The two Black Death hunters I’d seen suited up while Lucas had us pinned down.
“Split up,” Eva yelled.
Before I could say anything, she veered away from me, pulling a knife from the sheath on the side of her leg.
I glanced back up to see the hunters barreling toward us. They had their arms to their sides and feet together, turning themselves into human missiles.
The first one reached Eva and crashed into her at full speed. He latched onto her and they spun together in a tangle of arms and legs.
I pulled my own knife, not wanting the bulky weight of my sword, and adjusted my flight so I turned over, falling backward through the air so I could see my attacker.
But the second hunter blew right past me, going so fast he was a blur.
With a sickening feeling I realized what was happening.
They wanted me alive, so they were going to attack my friends.
I spun back around and copied the Black Death hunter, tilting my weight forward and making my profile as narrow as possible.
Without the wind resistance of my wing suit, I gathered incredible speed in only a few seconds. The wind tore at me. Tears streamed from my eyes making me squint, barely able to see where I was going. The guy I was chasing had goggles on. I made a mental note that the next time I escaped from the mountain fortress by base jumping out of a cave in a wingsuit, I would bring goggles of my own.
Even without them, I could see enough to tell the guy I was chasing was an expert at this. He zig-zagged from side-to-side with the barest movements of his arms and legs. I caught glimpses of who he was chasing beneath him. Too bad for the Black Death guy that he’d picked Daniel. Already the most physically strong among us, but now with the added werewolf blood in his veins, he was likely more than the hunter was expecting.
Still, I saw the sun glint off the knife in the hunter’s hand as he collided with Daniel, just as the other hunter had done with Eva. They wrestled for a few seconds and then the hunter pushed himself off Daniel and flew several yards away.
At first nothing happened, and then I saw Daniel frantically moving his arms, reaching back over his head to his back.
Suddenly, something tore from Daniel’s body and streaked up at me. If I’d had been thinking straight I would have reached out and caught it, but it flew by so fast it didn’t ever register what it was before it was long gone.
The hunter had cut off Daniel’s parachute.
That was a problem.
16
The hunter that had attacked Daniel moved on to Will. I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to help Daniel, but I figured the first thing was to stop the Black Death hunter from causing any more problems.
I leaned forward and closed in on them, all too aware of the altitude I was losing. The wingsuits slowed our fall, even allowing us to gain altitude with the right updraft, but all I was doing was shooting myself toward the earth like a bullet.
A quick look at the ground showed we’d lost a lot of altitude already. I had to move fast.
The hunter was hard to catch, especially with the wind causing me to squint my eyes until they were barely open. But I squeezed my legs together and made myself as compressed as possible, zipping through the air. Luckily, my target flared his arms wide to slow down before ramming into Will. That move gave me the split second I needed.
With a yell, I hammered right into him, hitting the guy squarely between the shoulder blades. Even with the wind howling around me, I heard the hunter grunt from the contact.
But the impact was harder than I’d anticipated. The knife in my hand jarred loose and fell away.
Unfortunately, the hunter held on to his.
With a snarl, he twisted in place as we grappled and fell through the air together. His knife slashed at my face, but I jerked away just in time. I’d thought a minute ago that they were supposed to keep me alive and that’s why they’d gone after my friends first. If that was the case, the hunter I was fighting obviously hadn’t got the message.
Or he’d decided not to follow it.
I grabbed his wrist, holding it in place with the knife pointed at my face. With his other hand, the hunter punched me over and over in the stomach. I was pretty fit, but this guy knew what he was doing, hitting the same spot until I cried out from the pain.
I didn’t have much time. I needed to end this quick.
To lure him in, I relaxed my grip on his wrist, hoping he’d think I was hurt and weakening.
It worked.
The hunter jerked his knife-hand free and raised it over his head in a clumsy move. The moment he did, I rolled him in the air like a spider wrapping an insect caught in a web.
A second later, I was on the hunter’s back, both hands wresting the knife away from him, pulling his wrist and forearm backward over his head.
At that angle, he’d either let go of the knife or have his arm broken.
The hunter let go of the knife.
As soon as he did, I cut both shoulder straps. He didn’t have his leg straps on, so his parachute came right off. The wind tried to whip it away but I grabbed it with my left hand.
“Sorry, I have a friend who needs this,” I yelled.
I pushed off the hunter, stretched out my arms and legs to get lift, and soared in the air above him.
As I did, Eva and the hunter she was fighting tumbled past me.
One thing at a time.
I spun around until I spotted Daniel high above. Smartly, he’d slowed his descent as much as possible once he lost his parachute. He was in no hurry to see what it felt like to crash land going thirty or forty miles an hour into solid rock. I didn’t blame him.
I waved my arms at him, holding the parachute I’d taken from the Black Death hunter as tight as I could to my chest. He got the message and was soon barreling toward me.
But he misjudged his speed and slammed into me. We both went spinning. As much as I tried to hold on, I lost my grip on the parachute. I clawed at the straps as it flew out of my arms.
I looked up, expecting to see it fly up and away from us. Instead, I saw Daniel had managed somehow to snatch it out of the air as it went by him. He gave me a thumbs-up and immediately went to work tying the straps back together so he could put it on.
I turned my attention to the area below us where T-Rex, Will, Xavier, and Eva were still flying. Along with the two Black Death hunters.
One was still fighting with Eva. The other was in fast pursuit of my other friends; probably desperate to find a way to acquire one of their parachutes for himself.
The ground was getting too close for comfort.
Leaving Daniel to figure out his chute, I flew downward.
As I did, I saw Eva finally kick away from the hunter she was fighting, executing a controlled backflip that ended in a vicious kick to the side of the hunter’s head.
That ended that fight.
The hunter slumped and fell quickly, his wingsuit no longing slowing his descent.
I thought Eva was going to let him fall, but then she flew after him, matching his speed until she was able to pull his parachute cord. The chute deployed, and the unconscious hunter soared upward. I hoped the guy woke up before he reached the bottom, but at least the worst he’d get was a hard landing. Better than being squished like a bug.
As looked back down, I saw one, then two, then finally a third parachute open.
I understood what was happening. As the falling hunter approached T-Rex, Will, and Xavier, they’d simply pulled their cords and soared above him. The wingsuit was no match for the loft provided by a parachute, so there was no way the hunter could match their reduced speed.
And it looked like we were well under a thousand feet now. There was no way I could reach the hunter before he hit the ground. Eva had shown mercy to her adversary. I wanted to do the same, but there wasn’t time.
But then I spotted the hunter turning hard to the right. I also saw where he was heading. Tucked into a green valley, alive and vibrant compared to the bleak mountain thousands of feet above, long sliver of blue lake reflected the winter sun.
I pulled my own parachute cord and, without any of us communicating, we all steered toward the lake.
We were still a hundred feet in the air when the hunter hit the water, skipping across the surface like a smooth stone. With a final splash, he stopped and disappeared under the surface.
A few long moments passed. Sure, the guy had tried to kill us, but I still felt a pit in my stomach as I watched ripples on the lake disappear.
Then, suddenly, a great splash erupted and the hunter broke the surface. As we passed over him, I saw him swimming for the shore.
I glanced up, looking for a spot to land. Tall pines lined the lake edge. There was no way to get high enough over the trees and to the fields I’d seen on the other side. Looked like we were destined for a water landing too.
“Head to the shallow water,” I called over my shoulder.
Once we hit water, staying on the surface would be difficult with packs strapped to our backs. Besides, our chutes might land on top of us, and the packs would be so much dead weight. Emphasis on dead.
T-Rex might float, but the rest of us would sink like stones.
Speaking of stones, I had a sudden pang of fear that I might lose the Jerusalem Stones in the water. I suddenly wished that I hadn’t hung around to see if the Black Death hunter made it. A nice, soft landing in a farmer’s field sounded like such a better idea.
A big splash behind me announced the end of planning time. Rapid fire, my friends hit the water. They came up gasping, shouting from the cold. All except Eva. Vampires don’t feel cold, so she shot up like a shark searching for prey. Fortunately, unlike Mr. Black Death, my friends all landed in the shallows.
I hit last, flaring my parachute at the last second to break my descent. It worked. I landed easily in water that reached only to my knees. I breathed a sigh of relief, and my legs shook from the adrenaline rush of the crazy flight down the mountain. I was feeling good about things until I turned around and looked behind me.
The Black Death hunter was swimming hard right behind T-Rex.
Before I could shout a warning, he grabbed my friend’s throat and pulled him under.
The water boiled with chaos. Arms flailed. T-Rex came up gurgling and shouting, then sank as Black Death pulled him under again.
Will was closest. He half-ran, half-swam through chest-deep water to help T-Rex. He reached him and jumped into the fight. Soon, T-Rex sputtered to the surface as Will peeled the Black Death hunter off and put him in a headlock. Seconds later Daniel reached them and grabbed the hunter’s legs. Together they dragged our new prisoner out of the water to the shore.
“Let me go!” the hunter shouted. “The Colonel will have your hides for this!”
“Shut up, you,” Daniel barked. “And stop kicking or I’ll knock you out to make it easier on myself.”
This calmed the hunter down since it clearly wasn’t an idle threat.
We climbed up on the shoreline and took cover under the tall pine trees surrounding the lake. Will and Daniel tossed their prisoner on the ground; then Eva and I held him there with our swords drawn. My blade quivered as I shook from the cold, but Eva’s was steady.
“It’s so cold,” T-Rex said.
“We need to get these clothes off to dry,” Xavier said. “And get moving to keep our body temperatures up.”
“What are we going to do with him?” Will asked, nodding toward their captive.
“I haven’t eaten in days,” Eva said, licking her lips. “How about you, Daniel? Hungry?”
“Now that you mention it,” Daniel said. “I could use some protein. He looks a little scrawny, but he’d be a good snack. You should go first though. Drain out all of his blood; then I’ll take what’s left.”
The color left the Black Death hunter’s face. He didn’t know they were just playing with him. At least I thought they were.
I crouched down on the ground next to the prisoner
and spoke in a low voice as if we had a secret to share. “Man, I’ve seen them eat when they’re hungry. It’s not a pretty sight.”
“P … pl … please,” the Black Death hunter stumbled, all of his attitude gone. “Don’t let them eat me.”
“C’mon Jack, I’m so hungry,” Eva whined, playing it up. She opened her mouth and her vampire incisors extended down below her lower lip, ready to feed. It made even my skin crawl. Our prisoner whimpered like a baby.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Gustav,” he said, his eyes never leaving Eva.
“Put yourself in my position, Gustav,” I said. “You just tried to kill us. Not cool. And here I have friends of mine who are really, really hungry. And I need their strength for the battles ahead. Seems to me the best thing for me to do is let them have you.”
“N … nnn … nooo,” he said.
“But if they don’t eat you, what am I going to do with you? I can’t take you with us. And I really can’t leave you here.”
“You can leave me here,” he said quickly. “I won’t follow you. I promise. I won’t tell anyone which way you went. You can trust me.”
“Ha!” Will said. “We can trust you, huh? That’s funny.”
I held up my hand. “Wait a second, maybe there’s something to this. Why don’t you show me how much I can trust you? Tell me what you know about where the Colonel means to attack. Where is the zombie army now?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Gustav said. “The Colonel would –”
“Okay, eat him,” I said, waving Eva forward.
“No wait!” Gustav screamed. “I don’t know much, but I’ll tell you what I can.”
I smiled. “That’s better. Start talking.”
The information about the attack mostly reconfirmed what I’d learned at the Council meeting. The supplies and weapons were shipped to Norway. Gustav didn’t have the exact location, and I believed he was scared enough that he would have confessed if he knew.
He’d also said that the new Lord of the Lesser Creach, a giant with six arms, was at Ren Lucre’s castle. But he’d heard the Lord wasn’t hiding there as Kahn had told me in Council, but that he was guarding the castle with an army of thousands of monsters. I didn’t like the sound of thousands more monsters, but if the Lord of the Lesser Creach was part of the castle’s defenses, then it might be possible to face him in battle. I needed to defeat the Lord of the Lesser Creach to get the fifth Jerusalem Stone.